Staff members of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were ordered to stay away from the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, as yellow police tape and officers blocked the building’s lobby.
This came after billionaire Elon Musk announced that President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut down the agency.
Additionally, USAID staff reported that more than 600 employees had been locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still with access received emails stating that, “at the direction of Agency leadership,” the headquarters building would be closed to personnel on Monday, February 3. The agency’s website also disappeared without explanation on Saturday.
These rapid developments follow the mass layoffs of thousands of USAID employees and the shutdown of numerous programs in the two weeks since President Trump took office. They also highlight the immense influence of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the Trump administration. Musk announced the agency’s closure early Monday while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on an official trip to Central America.
During a stop in El Salvador, Rubio told reporters that USAID was an uncooperative and non-transparent agency that had failed to provide clarity on its funding or align with the Trump administration’s policy objectives.
“And that sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct the sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid, writ large, should have,” said Rubio, who added that he was acting director of USAID but also had delegated that authority.
The turmoil comes after Trump ordered a freeze on foreign aid, causing widespread disruptions across the globe. As the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance, the U.S. has long used aid, development, and security funding as key tools for building alliances and countering adversaries like China and Russia. The abrupt policy shift has overturned decades of precedent.
As a result, U.S. and international organizations have been forced to shut down tens of thousands of programs worldwide, triggering furloughs, mass layoffs, and financial crises. Many fear that the aid sector has been so severely damaged by the freeze that it may not recover even if funding is restored.
Democratic lawmakers have strongly opposed the decision, arguing that Trump lacks the constitutional authority to dismantle USAID without congressional approval. They have also raised concerns over Musk’s access to sensitive government data through his Trump-approved inspections of federal agencies and programs.
“This is a corrupt abuse of power that is going on,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said at a rally with agency supporters and other Democratic lawmakers in front of the USAID building. “As my colleague said, it’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal.”
On Monday, two State Department employees attempting to enter the USAID offices were turned away by security guards. Later, uniformed officers from the Department of Homeland Security and agency security personnel sealed off the lobby of USAID headquarters with yellow “Do Not Cross” tape.
Despite the lockdown, the white USAID flag continued to fly over the empty plaza in front of the headquarters that morning. Staff members reported that earlier in the day, some employees had been able to access other parts of the building to retrieve personal belongings from their offices.
Musk, who is leading an unprecedented civilian review of the federal government with Trump’s approval, announced Monday morning that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade-old U.S. aid and development agency, and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
“We’re shutting it down,” he said.
Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have targeted the U.S. aid and development agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in some 120 countries, in increasingly strident terms, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.
Since Trump took office, appointees from his first term, such as Peter Marocco, have placed more than 50 senior USAID officials on leave for investigation without any public explanation, effectively dismantling the agency’s leadership. When the agency’s personnel chief determined that the allegations against them were baseless and attempted to reinstate them, he was also placed on leave.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration suspended two top USAID security chiefs after they refused to hand over classified materials from restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, according to a current and former U.S. official.
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Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had previously conducted a similar operation at the Treasury Department, gaining access to sensitive systems, including Social Security and Medicare payment data. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official resigned in protest over Musk’s team accessing highly sensitive information.
USAID has been one of the federal agencies most aggressively targeted by the Trump administration in its broader crackdown on the government and its programs.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump told reporters about USAID on Sunday night.
The Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid has shut down much of USAID’s global assistance programs. This includes an HIV/AIDS initiative launched by Republican President George W. Bush, which has been credited with saving over 20 million lives in Africa and beyond. Aid contractors reported that millions of dollars’ worth of medications and supplies are now stranded in ports, prohibited from being delivered.
Other shuttered programs include education initiatives for Afghan schoolgirls under Taliban rule and efforts to monitor a spreading Ebola outbreak in Uganda. A USAID-supported crisis monitoring system—credited with helping prevent a repeat of the 1980s famine in Uganda that killed up to 1.2 million people—has also gone offline.
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